As the insane one fired the first shot, Caile crouched low to the ground, relatively confident that he wouldn’t aim this low. He was afraid of the trees above him, afraid of someone walking into the clearing. What she didn’t want to do was offer herself as a target to who- or whatever was on the other side of the tree…somewhere.

The human emptied the clip. Silence descended, briefly, shattered again by sarcastic applause. Spyder still wanted to play. Well, that was fine with her. The humans both snapped their heads towards the sound, and Caile momentarily contemplated killing both of them. But she was wounded, and a target, and needed to meet her contact. If the person who had shot her was a bounty hunter, they would likely find the vampire hybrid a more enticing catch. Time for her—and the unfortunate human on the ground, now opting for the fetal position—to make their respective exits. She’d let Spyder and the other one play a bit, hopefully keep the hunter off her trail.

Conscious of the gaps in the trees, aware that her invisibility could drop at any moment, Caile rolled smoothly into the clearing and knelt beside the one who cowered in the dirt. In a single smooth motion, she slid a dagger between two of the vertebrae in his neck and twisted slightly. He went limp at once.

She hoped the trees gave enough cover; if she reached the other side of the clearing, she could probably make it. And then, by Luck, she’d need a healer and a beer.

"WHO'S THERE!?"A burst of gunfire."SHOW YOURSELF!"The man spun, madness gripped him. His eyes bulged, veins throbbing, hands clenched so tight his knuckles were white. His head flicked back and forth scanning the treetops.

"...over here..."

His breathing quickened, his pulse raced.A whisper, but somehow so loud, so close to his ear. He spun and fired another short burst."LET ME SEE YOU!" he huffed, face red with anger and fear. "COME OUT!" Another few rounds into the trees.

"...over here..."

He spun, a figure! His weapon unleashed a barrage until it went empty, filling the man with bullets.The dry click was audible, like a crashing boom in the silence of the jungle.

"...turn around..."He froze, spine going stiff as his eyes only just realized what it was he had shot.His head just managed to turn...then it was far too late.A moment of pain then sweet oblivion took him.

- - -

He clapped his hands before easily scurrying down the tree a few limbs, taking cover as the man fired.Zephyr closed his eyes and focused on the mental image of the man in the clearing. He spoke, softly as if in someones ear.The man began to fire again and Zephyr moved. Back up, up, up the tree and into the refuge of the webway. Crossing the silken strands, he produced his knife and with a few swift strokes easily removed the cocoon of what was once a human from the 'wall' and returned his knife to its resting place.

He made a gesture with his hand. Bullets sang out nearby.Satisfied that the silk would hold he let gravity take over and dropped the web sack down a murder hole. He braced himself at the edge an just before it hit the ground he gave a a sharp tug and latched the web into place. He turned and faced a murder hole a few feet away. Again he closed his eyes. This time it was harder. The image fuzzy in such a way as a puzzle without pieces. It was enough though. He spoke again.

Bullets broke the silence.Zephyr snapped his eyes open and took a running leap into the murder hole. His hand graced the edge as he passed running out a line. Before he hit the ground he tugged up and flicked his elbow blade across the strand letting him fall to the ground lightly. He stood and whispered.The man began to turn slowly. He stank of fear and death...Zephyr opened his mouth and sank his glistening fangs into the mans exposed neck.

Oblivion. Sweet and pure.

Cruor Vult

Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of our greatest strength, and our greatest weakness.

Aside from the man who had probably by now bled out from the dagger wounds, all of his bait had now expended its usefulness. He peered down the barrel of his rifle at the creature that had his back turned to him and was now draining the life blood from the last. He had not seen his face, but his form seemed familiar, as though perhaps he had wandered somewhere into town and had, in some perverse manner, passed as human. Who could tell, though? If it weren't for the fact that he had his jaw clasped tightly around the other man's neck, you'd never have guessed. It bothered him, like so many other things about the world that he had found himself thrust into. Metas passing as humans? How many like this wandered the streets of every town? Was humanity truly a dying race in these dark days? Was the meta the new race to end all races? He had little to say in the matter, as he was scarcely more human than the person down there drying a now-dying husk of its essence. He had fought so many creatures, and had so many parts of himself rebuilt, that he sometimes doubted his own humanity. If it weren't for that inkling of a consciousness the religious nuts would call a soul, he might label himself a machine by now.

The barrel of the gun stared down the fanged one's skull like a needle seeking a vein. It was poised to strike the life out of the meta just as he had snuffed the lives of these once-men. The machine-man sighed softly, breathed out, and prepared to fire.

But just then, in a single moment of unbridled generosity, he turned the barrel not a single degree to the right before depressing the trigger. The rifle, as it had always been, was silent and unerring. The round passed within six inches of the meta's skull, and instead entered the skull of the man that was being drained. The upper section of his skull exploded forward in a red haze, no doubt sending enough shock to knock the meta off and at least daze him.

The machine-man detached his rifle from his eye, gripped it with one arm, and slung it around to his side as best he could in the awkward manner with which he sat. He shoved his legs sharp against the tree branch in front of himself, and kicked off with surprisingly force and finesse. Performing some brand of half-backflip mid air as he slid out of the tree's warm embrace, he landed effortlessly on the ground some twenty feet from the meta. His vision immediately flickered to infrared and he scanned briefly, finding the other meta, the clawed one, in the periphery of his vision. He made sure to keep them both in his line of sight, and stood upright, looking at the back of the meta that was once drinking a now-dead man's blood. Readying himself for either war or the parting of ways at top speed, he called out to the meta.

"Mercy. It is mercy that enables me to still call myself human."

"I'll come to Florida one day and make you look like a damn princess." ~Hep

Spyder had dropped from the canopy to feast on the second human. Caile could not have asked for a better distraction; that was sure to catch the hunter’s attention.

She could feel her invisibility spell weakening, making the air around her shimmer like a heat haze. She leapt the rest of the way across the clearing, tumbling not entirely silently into the underbrush. Letting the invisibility drop, Caile turned to offer a two-fingered salute in the vampire’s direction…and then the human’s head exploded. Caile stumbled backwards into a bush and took off sprinting into the jungle.

She grabbed the spare shirt from her pack as she ran and wiped the blood from her dagger on the sleeve before sheathing it. Well, that escalated quickly. Pausing behind a tree, Caile ripped a strip of cloth from around the hem of the shirt and bound her waist. At least the wound wasn’t too deep but she would certainly have a scar, and keeping up a swift pace would almost certainly cause her to bleed out. Damn—all the spider’s silk in the clearing would have made for a lovely bandage. She couldn’t stick around to find out who had shot her and the human, though. She’d have to compromise.

Caile replaced the bloodied remains of her shirt in the pack and started off again at a jog—more of a lope with her long legs. She’d put another 15 minutes between her and the clearing and then slow to a walk—a cautious walk. Hopefully that would be enough to save her life on both counts.

Behind her, she heard the hunter speak for the first time—something about mercy making him a better person. Eff that.

He did not draw life, but gave the gift of death.His poisons and toxins entered the mans body and at once began to break him down from the inside. Of course, to any casual observer it would look like he was doing the vampire as they say. Whatever helped them justify the things they see, only fit his reputation more so. He had just removed his fangs when his entire body flinched as though slapped by an invisible hand. His warning system had kicked in and while those few individuals he spoke with about it might have considered it the best early warning system genetics could by, the reality was it was a crapshoot. That he was in danger was for certain, but from where? How?

The specifics he did not know. He could very well off himself by moving or by standing there. Was it this man? Was he rigged with some sort of device? His first reaction to throw the man and dive for cover passed by. Another? Someone he missed? In his excitement did the spider fall into his own tangled web? The feeling passed just as quickly and Zephyr let go of the breath, easing off the man by a few scant inches. That may have saved him his life.

The dead mans head exploded into a fine mist, covering Zephyrs flinching face with a spray of blood, brains and flecks of teeth. He stood there, stock still for a moment, letting the offal run down his face. Movement from the trees, the sound of metal and hissing gears. There was a figure some distance from him. He glared in that direction before slowly wiping his face off. he licked the back of his hand and settled into a stance something someone might call casual.

"Mercy?" He began."Human?" He shook his head."Not something that go together. Mercy being in short supply and Human..." He said the word slowly like he was chewing a piece of bad meat. "...nothing more than a scent, a taste, an expression of cowardice and frailty."He cocked an eyebrow. "Are you suggesting these things stranger?"Where the woman had gone was no longer a concern for a moment, there may be more killing to be done and his target, before him.

Cruor Vult

Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of our greatest strength, and our greatest weakness.

He acted like nothing in this life or the next mattered. Not like he was hunted, or hunter, just that he was there. What a mockery of all that the world once stood for. The mere thought that these abominations could pass as human ground at his thoughts, as though a blade crashing hard against stone. This was not what he was paid to do. This was not what he wanted to do with his time. This creature was beneath him, and he had no interest in it any longer. Prey or not, hunter or not, fight or otherwise, there was nothing to be gained here.

"You speak like you know anything about humanity. Living here in the woodlands and scouring across the worst that humanity has to offer, you find nothing what but you seek. If you care to be more than you are, and at least what you can be, then you need to see beyond the thin veil that you have pulled before your eyes." He pointed at the beasts face accusingly.

Virtually no time passed. The words poured from his mouth as though he had planned them aeons ago.

"I am no assassin. I only hunt that which values life, for it is that value that makes the hunt worth having."

From his right shoulder, he unpinned a clasp, and threw his cloak fully around himself. The cloak shimmered in the light in an almost impossible way, bending light in ways that create paradoxes in the mind's eye. One might describe it as warping the very space around the man. He turned his back to the meta as the cloak swished behind him in a cold manner that could only be described as utterly uncaring. He took a few paces as though to leave, but then turned his head to the left, managed a sick smile, and called back to the meta one last thing:

"Tell me, though. If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around, does it make a sound?"

Without waiting for a response, his left arm clicked a trigger in his hand that he held before himself such that it couldn't be seen. The tree between himself and the meta that he was sitting in mere moments ago exploded with the force of several sticks of dynamite, splintering completely and blowing out in all directions. And just like that, the metal man was gone, seeking and running after the trail of the lion creature, one who might actually be worth the chase. His mechanical legs enabled him to sprint in an inhuman way, far out-speeding the speed of a normal land animal.

"I'll come to Florida one day and make you look like a damn princess." ~Hep

This arrogant little tin man.He finds a soul in a forest and then begins to preach about how HE is a lost little lamb and one that knows nothing can understand nothing. Zephyr chuckled on the inside, knowing the thing on his 'doorstep' could only be truly referring to itself. A mockery of human semblance. A shuffling wind up soldier that had seen one too many rainy days. A childs discarded toy left to rot in the wasteland. If it only knew how many places he had, how many things he had seen and how many humans he had helped as much as hindered.

His gaze narrowed, the hairs on his neck bristled with such barbed comments being thrown at him, as if he had led the charge down to Matry Landing and slaughtered all those women and children with claw and fang and all manner of beastly armament. This preacher, for only a whackjob would mouth off as such, then had the audacity to say he was no assassin, while being the trigger man for the soul only moments before. Was the mercy in letting Zephyr live or ending that mans life? It could be both, but an obvious extremist case such as the Metal Man could only chose one or the other.

Not even a moment to respond before he swooped away like a villain in a play.If in that moment Zephyr could kill with a simple stare than that thing before him would have been reduced to the old fridge and Pinto parts from which its mother and father constituted it from. He then turned and grinned and uttered some sort of phrase that sounded as though ravens were writing desks before every fiber of Zephyrs being flared. His sixth sense went berserk and it was all he could do to keep the animal side in check. It screamed and raged and he flinched from the mental impact. Everything happened so slowly for him...

The crashing sound.The wave of pain.A sensation of burning.Impacts against his form.Blinding light.

His body reacted, throwing him back, yet even that was little enough.Shards of wood slashed across the delicate flesh of his face and ripped through his clothing. The ground behind him did little to cushion the blow of the impact as his body smashed against it. The concussion wave ripped into him like a fist of the Almighty and sent his skidding form across the way. He could feel his twisted heart skip a beat and his eyes felt as if they would burst. There was only a ringing in his ears, his vision distorted, the ground trembled beneath him...muscles tightened, breathing ceased, again he moved from some unseen danger, some unknowable trouble. He rolled to the left and by some sheer fortune managed to avoid being crushed by the tree that came crashing down. Small flames licked at him from smoking debris. The snap and crackle of wood began to assault him, as well as the smell of burnt sugary sap and smoke. He began to sit up, only to find he hurt in a great many places. He grit his teeth and pushed, finding out that thanks to his unique life choice bestowed to him by whatever the hell did everything to people, his true flesh held him together. He ached but more than that his heart burned.

This tin preacher had done all this for no reason.Those men were nothing. Zephyr no obvious threat to the mans safety as there was probably very little blood anywhere save the metal he forgot to shave down from past kills. No, this thing came into his domain and had his little display out of sheer fanatical arrogance. Muscles flexed beneath his smoking clothes, things he kept out of sight tried to stretch but he restrained them.

I live...so far worse a hunter than a preacher...tin man...Pursue? Kill? Maim in some horrible way? See what a bunch of magnets would do?He dismissed all of them. There was a rage, but it trickled away. The tin man was gone, off in pursuit of far better prey no doubt. The woman...also gone. Zephyr had lost track of her some time ago. He sighed, his ire there but lurking. Instead of pursuit he slowly stood and looked toward the webway far above.There was killing to be done...in time.

Cruor Vult

Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of our greatest strength, and our greatest weakness.

Her side ached, and the blood soaked the fabric around her waist. How can a cut shallow enough not to nick the ribs bleed so much? Caile slowed and pulled out the remains of the shirt again, ripping off another square of fabric to stuff into the bandage. Her ears twitched and she sorted through jungle sounds, searching for anything out of place.She didn’t have to search very long.

An enormous explosion echoed from the direction of the clearing, making Caile nearly jump out of her skin. That had to have been more than one stick of dynamite. Her eyes widened as realization dawned. The hunter set it up. Probably had that clearing rigged to blow from the beginning. She clutched a hand to her chest to still her pounding heart and bowed her head. Lady Luck, I thank you for the wits you gave me and for the wound that sent me from the clearing in time. Please watch over me as you always do, and may your benevolence favor me.

Spyder was almost certainly dead, though Caile’s instincts told her not to count him out just yet. Most importantly, the hunter probably believed him to be dead, or incapacitated enough to leave him be—meaning she had to get the hell out of there. Caile started forward again, at a run this time. What to do? There was no way she could make it to her contact ahead of the hunter, nor would she find any protection there. She had to find something else…

A spasm of pain stabbed Caile’s side, and again she wished for spider’s silk as she felt the blood trickling down her skin. Spider’s silk…The sinkhole into the ruins. Those webs which, it suddenly dawned on her, were rather like the ones of Spyder’s treetop fortress. She ticked her new assets off her list: better bandages to stop the bleeding; a ready-made deathtrap; a brood of basilisks below in case the hunter survived the fall; an intricate set of webs sturdy enough to hold my weight, whose puzzle I can likely decipher, allowing me to at least hide from the hunter if not succeed in killing him. Decision made. Caile changed direction immediately grabbing a tree branch to swing herself over a fallen log and towards the old ruins.

She needed to get there as fast and as quietly as possible, and with as little chance of being tracked as she could manage; time to start climbing. Claws extended, Caile leapt for a low-hanging branch and in one smooth motion swung herself into the lowest layer of the canopy. The network of branches and hanging vines would get her all the way to the edge of the sinkhole.

She could do this. Caile was not going to die to a human. One finger brushed against the X tattooed over her heart—she doubted this human would need the guidance, but he had spoken of mercy. Caile could hope, if it came to that, that this human would give her a swift end.

Her eyes narrowed. She needed to get to the sinkhole fast enough to set up a good trap, or, if not that, a good defensive position, or, if even that failed, a good hiding spot. Let’s do this.

He didn't necessarily hate the metas, only what they had forced him to become. If anything, it was a self-loathing at that which he had become compared to what he once was. He genuinely hoped he hadn't killed the meta he just left behind... he had no quarrel with him. The only requirement was that he instill in it some manner of caution that it might not pursue—

He swiftly leaped amidst logs and sticks and boulders as though he were a creature of a forest himself, but as his mind crossed to the thought of the pursuit, he registered a change in the winds and stopped suddenly. For a man with so much metal within and without his body, he had masterfully retained every bit of the quietus he carried as a full human in his earlier life. The impetus he carried halted suddenly, and with it the ease of this chase; his quarry had turned around. Truthfully he had nothing against this creature, but he had little option in the matter; he had to live just as anyone else did with the set of skills he was given, and death was his trade.

The winds sold the creature out for a meager price. It had turned to run back towards the spider's lair and that massive underground ruin a short run back. This would undoubtedly bring him close to the meta he had just scoffed, and he debated whether it was worth the trouble. The debate was silenced as quickly as it had came into existence, and in a moment he was turning to give chase once more. He was close enough that if his target stopped to set any semblance of a trap, he'd be on top of it before any could be laid. His legs carried him quicker than any mere man's could, and as the chase continued, the gap only closed further. They were coming up on the cliffside and the climb down to the sinkhole, and there was little room for the creature to breathe if it did not take an action soon.

Truth be told, however, no such action would matter in the end.

"I'll come to Florida one day and make you look like a damn princess." ~Hep

With effort he climbed.Every step, each handhold, whenever he stretched just a bit too far, his true flesh grated. Like two stones being struck across one another, passing by but only just. It was not a slow climb, not a staggering, faltering, jagged climb, but not quite the acrobatic lunge up into the webway. It did not take him long to reach those lofty heights but when he did, he could feel how much had changed. The structure was no longer secure, no longer safe. The time spent reinforcing would be a waste, its location known, compromised. Sighing Zephyr carefully picked his way across the silken strings toward the hollowed out old tree.

He sat on a chair of sorts and removed his clothing. Sure enough, his body was marred by tiny little fragments of splintered wood. he wiped his brow, noticing his hand came back red and sighed again with an edge of annoyance. Opening a case nearby, he removed the few medical supplies this location had and began to pull, one at a time, the fragments that had imbedded themselves within his upper body. He grit his teeth once or twice, most of the pieces not even registering as pain, the thick chitinous plating that made up his frame having stopped the majority from doing anything other than being a nuisance. Any he missed would no doubt be lost in his next molting anyway. His gaze suddenly fell upon another box and the contents half seen inside.

Removing the last offending piece, he shrugged back into his coat and took one of the items in the box in hand.This place was compromised, he knew what he had to do.

Cruor Vult

Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of our greatest strength, and our greatest weakness.

The sinkhole yawned only a few hundred feet away. Caile tumbled from the treetops and crossed the open ground to the sinkhole in a mad dash on all fours. Her nose brought her news of the stranger—any traps to be laid would need to be done quickly, and in the sinkhole itself.

A summersault sent Caile over the lip of the sinkhole where she had descended earlier that day and cut away some of the webbing. A powerful kick against the wall as she descended sent her flying into the thickest part of the webs. She clung to a few thick strands and wriggled her body into a small pocket of webbing rather like a hammock.

Caile went limp and perfectly still, letting the gently swaying web strands settle as she focused on slowing her heart rate and breathing and took stock of her surroundings. As her eyes adjusted to the near-twilight, Caile noticed pockets like this one throughout the system of webs. She glanced upward; her view to the surface was almost entirely obscured, but the webs would certainly not defend against a spray of bullets. The sinkhole seemed less well-stocked than the canopy fort had been, but the walls of the sinkhole were riddled with passageways that could provide cover, if nothing else. There was no time to search them for materials. If she was going to accomplish anything, Caile would have to act fast.

It was likely she only had time for one quick adjustment; but if it worked, it was all she would need. Caile got carefully to her feet. As in the canopy fort, her feet seemed perfect for navigating the thick webs. A few quick experiments with distributing her weight told her everything she needed to know about tension patterns of this particular hammock. Her eyes, meanwhile, scanned the nearby webs for a gap that would have enabled quick movement upward.

There! Placing her feet carefully, Caile pounced through the opening, gripping a couple of web strands and swinging herself to a higher hammock. Her ears swiveled. The hunter was almost upon her. The top layer of webs was just above her. If she could just find the right strand of webbing, Caile might be able to weaken the whole top layer of webs just enough that, should the hunter attempt to use them to reach her, he would find nothing under him but air.

Metal ground to a halt against itself, and his fleshy bits almost stood on end as he took on the surroundings. There was a deep sinkhole before him, down into which the creature had leaped only moments prior. He could give chase into what was obviously a trap—though crudely made in little time—or he could do something a little more dramatic and leave the creature to rot in the crypt of its own making. He was a hunter, and wanted his prize, but he could just as easily fish it out of some wreckage after the fact if he needed to. Besides, he knew the routes of this cavernous complex undoubtedly better than the beast did. It was an easy decision to make, and truth be told, an expression of pleasure for what was to come played across his features. Hunting was a battle of wits, and this creature would not easily match his. He had hunted far worse.

In a few seconds, he grabbed something cylindrical out from his long coat. It was a canister of sorts, and he pushed a few buttons, clearly playing in some key, and then rotated the top of the canister and pushed it into the bottom half. It clicked, beeped for a moment, and then lay silent. He looked once more at the sinkhole, waited exactly 5 seconds, and dropped the canister into it.

6... 7... 8...

As the number 9 rang out in his mind, the canister struck the bottom of the fall into the sinkhole, past a few webs no doubt of some spider's design. The canister bounced once into the air, no more than two feet up, spinning ever so slightly in its lift. It wouldn't get to see a second bounce.

10

The canister erupted into a ferocious explosion, blasting upward and outward, engulfing the entrance into the sinkhole. The passageways linking to the room where the explosion took place would no doubt be filled with fire, scorching anything there. Basilisks, likely the same ones from before, would soon be out in force scouring the wreckage, looking for whatever created the blast... And likely finding the beast he was hunting in the process.

From his vantage point, he watched the sinkhole spit out a final breath of dust and rocky mist before crumbling and closing in on itself. He knew, far to the edge of this area, where the other exit was, and that was his next destination. Without so much as a single further glance, he burst off in that direction, looking forward to seeing if his quarry were savvy enough to survive the trap reversed.

He hadn't enjoyed a hunt like this in a long time.

"I'll come to Florida one day and make you look like a damn princess." ~Hep